Timeline of the 100-Day Trump, Musk, and Congressional Attack on the CFPB
In its first 100 days, the Trump administration moved aggressively to dismantle the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), leaving the public vulnerable to predation by Wall Street, Big Tech, and predatory lenders, and satisfying the financial industry’s desire to operate without oversight.
Elon Musk declared war on the CFPB, which would shield the companies he owns from oversight, since the CFPB has jurisdiction over the payments app he is building on his social media platform X and regulates auto lending, including Tesla car loans. Musk’s DOGE team invaded the CFPB, looted its confidential and personal data and has led the charge to try to purge the agency of nearly all of its staff.
The Republican-majority in Congress has largely aligned with the administration’s efforts to tear apart the CFPB despite high levels of broad-based, bipartisan support for the CFPB and the critical services and protections it provides by voting to overturn CFPB rules and proposing (so far, in the House) a budget that slashes its budget by 70 percent and empties the restitution fund it uses to repay consumers harmed by companies that are unable to pay damage.
The 100-day attack on the CFPB has included moves to slash funding and purge staff (so far been mostly stopped by the courts), halt enforcement and supervision, cancel or reverse enforcement cases, curb its consumer protection mission, shutter its headquarters, and more.
February 1
- Trump fired CFPB Director Rohit Chopra, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent named acting CFPB director
February 3
- Bessent ordered CFPB staff to halt enforcement, regulatory activity, and public communications
February 5
February 6
- The CFPB asked a court to delay the implementation of the medical debt rule for 90 days to allow the administration to review (read, eliminate) the rule that prevents medical debt from capsizing people’s credit scores and prohibit lenders from considering medical debt when they make loan decisions, making credit more available and affordable for the millions of families with medical debt.
February 7
- Project 2025 ringleader Russel Vought installed as acting Director of CFPB.
- Elon Musk tweeted “CFPB RIP, Musk’s DOGE team embedded in CFPB. A CFPB staffer later testified that the DOGE team came in with “a very hard fist” and sowed “confusion” and “chaos.”
- The CFPB home page – later restored – displayed 404 page not found error after Musk announced CFPB RIP.
February 8
- Vought ordered the CFPB to halt all supervision and examination activity and canceled its quarterly funding request. In an email to CFPB staff, Vought told workers to “stand down from performing any work task,” and that “employees should not come into the office” for one week. Among other things, the stop work order prevented CFPB staff from helping 75 families at risk of imminent foreclosure among 16,000 stranded consumer complaints, including 250 congressional referrals.
- Musk’s X deleted the CFPB X account
February 9
February 11
- CFPB had to restore weekly mortgage reporting of “average prime offer rate,” data necessary for mortgage lenders to offer qualified mortgages that fulfill the statutory requirements that borrowers have the ability to repay the loans. This ongoing work was halted by the CFPB stop work order and threatened to undermine the mortgage lending and housing markets.
February 12
- Trump initiated mass layoffs at CFPB, firing all probationary employees; CFPB staff testify that the agency complaint hotline was disabled and the complaint online portal and database was hobbled by Vought’s freeze
- Trump nominated Jonathan McKernan to be director of CFPB.
February 13
- Trump administration agreed not to unilaterally defund the CFPB during a lawsuit brought by City of Baltimore and Economic Action Maryland Fund.
- The National Treasury Employees Union that represents CFPB workers as well as the National Consumer Law Center, the NAACP, and the Virginia Poverty Law Center sued Russel Vought to prevent the mass firings, reverse the stop work order, restore CFPB contracts, and restore CFPB operations.
February 14
- Federal judge blocked efforts to purge additional CFPB staff and the preliminary injunction prevents the deletion of data, transfer funds or cut the budget, or fire staff. Even after the injunction, CFPB staff later testified that the stop work orders had not been rescinded, and statutorily required work, including bank supervision and compliance exams, was stopped.
February 18
- Trump issued executive order unlawfully subverting the independence of agencies like the CFPB
February 19
- Trump issued executive order empowering DOGE deregulatory agenda
- The CFPB withdrew from a friend of the court amicus brief with the New York Attorney General that challenged the unfairness and risks of the so-called home equity investment contracts that are essentially predatory loans that have ended up costing people their homes. The withdrawal from the amicus brief highlighted the CFPB’s new concern with how it might “harm the property interests” of the predatory lender.
February 22
- The CFPB withdrew a lawsuit against predatory fintech lender Solo Funds for deceptively collecting $21 million in “tips” from customers. This was the first CFPB case that was dropped with prejudice, meaning the case cannot be brought again in the future and almost all the subsequent enforcement roll-backs were with prejudice.
- Vought tried to shutter CFPB headquarters
February 24
- Justice Department lawyers reported in court filings that the administration had canceled the lease on the CFPB headquarters
February 27
- The Senate Banking Committee held a hearing to consider the nomination of Jonathan McKernan for Director of the CFPB where McKernan parroted the words of the lawbreaking financial companies when he testified that the CFPB was acting outside its authority, that it lacked legitimacy, that he intended to undermine the independence of the agency, and that he favored far lower funding levels.
- The CFPB dropped a case against Capital One for cheating depositors out of $2 billion in interest on their accounts. Capital One had marketed its 360 Savings account as having some of the best interest rates in the country – a 0.30 percent rate – but did not tell customers that they were eligible for a similar sounding product – the 360 Performance Savings account – that had rates of up to 4.35 percent.
- The CFPB dropped a case against Rocket Mortgage for offering unlawful kickbacks for a mortgage broker to steer customers to Rocket and its affiliates that prevented homebuyers from accessing valuable programs or services Rocket didn’t offer, such as downpayment assistance worth thousands of dollars.
- The CFPB dropped a case against Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency for allegedly illegally sicced debt collectors on student borrowers who had legally discharged these debts in bankruptcy, hassling them for debts they no longer had any legal obligation to repay.
- The CFPB dropped a case against predatory lender Heights Finance, a company that targeted people living paycheck to paycheck by churning borrowers into a never-ending cycle of debt that generated hundreds of millions of dollars in fees and loan charges.
- CFPB dropped a case against Vanderbilt Mortgage & Finance, the biggest lender for mobile home buyers. The CFPB had alleged that the Warren Buffet owned Vanderbilt “knowingly traps people in risky loans just to close the deal on selling a manufactured home” and that Vanderbilt unlawfully originated these loans to people who could not keep up with the payments, were charged late fees, and faced foreclosure.
March 3
- The CFPB dropped a case against TransUnion for repeatedly deceiving millions of people into signing up for paid monthly subscriptions for credit monitoring services.
- Federal judge extends the preliminary injunction through March 13 prohibiting the agency from slashing its funding or firing staff. Affidavits filed in the case reveal the Trump administration intended to fire nearly 1,200 of the agency’s 1,700 staff.
March 4
- The CFPB dropped a case against the digital payment app Zelle, a joint venture between Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, and Bank of America, delivering a de facto pardon to the company for failing to protect its users from fraud and identity theft that cost customers more than $870 million over seven years.
March 5
- Senate voted to overturn the CFPB payment app oversight rule that would have provided oversight of Big Tech payment apps and digital wallets to protect users from fraud, privacy erosion, and deactivation of their accounts. Over 110 community, civil rights, privacy, consumer, labor, technology, small business, and other organizations urged the Senate to vote against the measure.
- House Financial Services Committee voted on partisan lines to overturn the CFPB overdraft rule which capped overdraft fees at $5 which would save families $5 billion each year – $225 per household that pays overdraft fees.
March 6
- Despite the federal court injunction, Trump administration officials continued to hold meetings to plan to layoff 1,200 of 1,700 workers.
- The CFPB dropped its case against Acima, which the CFPB suit claimed used “deceptive dark patterns and other tricks to trap consumers in high-cost credit agreements to finance the purchase of household goods.”
March 11
- Senator Rounds introduced a resolution to overturn the CFPB medical debt rule that prevents medical debt from capsizing people’s credit scores. More than 100 million people have medical debt and it shows up on the credit reports of 15 million people.
March 12
- The New York Times identifies at least 215 CFPB staff firings.
March 13
- Trump CFPB attorneys joined banking industry lawyers to pause the industry lawsuit to block the CFPB rule to cap credit card late fees at $8 which would save customers $10 billion annually.
March 25
- The CFPB withdrew from a case the New York Attorney General brought against Citibank for failing to have strong safeguards to prevent account hacking, misleading customers about their rights when accounts are hacked and funds are stolen, and unlawfully denying reimbursement to fraud victims.
March 26
- CFPB requested that a federal court reverse a racial discrimination settlement that the agency had previously reached with Townstone Financial, a Chicago-based mortgage lender, stemming from allegations that it had refused to serve Black neighborhoods in Chicago, areas the CEO referred to using egregiously racist language.
- House Financial Services Committee hearing introduced a fleet of bills aimed at weakening the independence, reducing the funding, and undermining the mission of the CFPB.
March 27
March 28
- Federal judge issued a preliminary injunction against Trump administration’s efforts to dissolve the CFPB stating: “There is no act of Congress that empowers the president to shut down the CFPB at his discretion.” The injunction required the CFPB to bring back fired workers, lift the stop work order, resume contracts, and protect data.
- The CFPB announced it would not enforce a rule that prohibited payday lenders from repeatedly debiting people’s accounts and running up multiple overdraft or insufficient funds fees. The bounced payment rule was the last shred of the payday lending rule that was maintained by the first Trump administration and had survived multiple court challenges.
April 2
- House Financial Services Committee voted on partisan lines to repeal a Dodd-Frank Act provision (known as Section 1071) which requires the CFPB to collect data essential to identify lending discrimination and credit needs for small businesses and farms.
April 6
- Nearly two months after a court ordered the CFPB to rescind the stop work order, the CFPB resumes some enforcement activity, but only over the Military Lending Act and joint cases with state attorneys general
April 7
- The CFPB withdrew a 2022 CFPB lawsuit against MoneyGram for its persistent failure to comply with consumer protection laws by failing to promptly deliver international wire transfers, resolve disputes, and implement policies to comply with the law.
- The CFPB prevented examiners from resuming their supervision of banks and non-banks even though the March 28 injunction invalidated the stop work order.
April 9
April 11
- The CFPB announced it would de-prioritize enforcement of the repeat offender registry for non-banks, a critical investigatory and compliance tool for companies with multiple enforcement actions by federal and state regulators.
- An appeals court partially stayed the injunction against mass firings at the CFPB, only allowing the agency to fire workers after careful consideration that they were not needed to carry out the CFPB’s statutory requirements.
April 14
- The CFPB dropped a case against Comerica which was brought over the shoddy service and ATM fee gouging on Comerica’s prepaid card used by 3.4 million Social Security recipients. (This dropped case was the only one it dismissed “without prejudice,” meaning it could be refiled in the future, all of the other cases were dropped “with prejudice,” meaning they could not be refiled.)
April 16
- Federal judge vacated the CFPB $8 cap on credit card late fees at the behest of the Trump CFPB
April 16
- CFPB memo to staff announced it would shift enforcement to state regulators and halt supervision of non-bank financial firms meaning that non-bank mortgage lenders, student lenders, payday lenders, credit card companies, and Big Tech payment apps would get no supervision.
April 17
- Trump administration announced 1,500 layoffs, unlawfully purging 88 percent of CFPB staff. The mass firing failed to have careful consideration of workers’ role in fulfilling the CFPB statutory mission.
April 18
- Judge again blocked illegal CFPB staff purge but let terminations continue if a careful assessment found the workers were not needed to carry out statutory requirements.
April 23
- The CFPB dropped a deceptive marketing, fee gouging, and unfair practices case against Horizon credit cards and its parent Reliant Holdings
April 24
- CFPB dropped its case against PayPal for skirting prepaid card rules that apply to gift cards and re-chargeable payment apps. PayPal had sued to overturn the rule because it wants to be exempt from these basic fee and terms transparency requirements that protect users.
- The Department of Justice shuttered its Consumer Protection Branch that prosecuted fraud cases involving older people and military service personnel
April 25
- The CFPB dropped a case against student debt investors, scraps $2.25 million settlement, the case was launched in the first Trump administration over allegations the student loan trusts used illegal debt collection practices such as suing for debts beyond the statute of limitations, going after debts that it could not prove were owed, and filing false affidavits.
- The CFPB dropped a case against subprime auto lender Credit Acceptance Corp. The CFPB charged the lender with misrepresenting the cost of car loans, tricking borrowers into taking out high-cost loans that they could not repay and risking repossession of their cars.
April 28
- Court invalidated CFPB mass firings that clarified that “the March 28 ban on any reduction-in-force has been reinstated as originally issued. Under these circumstances, the RIF enjoined by this Court on April 18 cannot go forward at all.”
- The CFPB lifted a consent order against Wells Fargo, which had racked up 12 federal consent orders and a Federal Reserve imposed asset cap for widespread regulatory and consumer protection compliance problems, including the fake account scandal. The CFPB action paves the way for Wells Fargo to get the asset cap lifted and allows it to become an even bigger bank.
April 30
- On the 101st day, the House Financial Services Committee takes up budget reconciliation legislation that cuts the CFPB budget by 70 percent and empties the restitution fund it uses to repay consumers harmed by companies that are unable to pay damages.
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